INSCRIBED ARROWHEADS

The picture shows both sides of an ancient leaf-form arrowhead (2.75 inches). It would come from the Levant (Syria-Palestine) but its exact origins are not known. The object can be viewed in its glory here:
http://edgarlowen.com/b10115.jpg

This has joined the three dozen examples of arrowheads with inscriptions that show ownership. The language is always West Semitic, or "Canaanian" (the language of Canaan, particularly its Hebrew and Phoenician forms).
   The script is an early version of the alphabet. The letters have lost their pictorial style, that is, the objects they originally represented are no longer recognizable, and they are now neutral.
   The word for "arrow"(HS in Hebrew and Phoenician) is usually found at the beginning, and that is the case here: on the lower picture, on the right, reading from right to left, we see the H (an emphatic h) looking like a square 8, and then the S (an emphatic s) resembling 7 with a tail, or a reversed S.

   Remember, vowels are not shown, only consonants, in early alphabetic inscriptions.
   (Nevertheless, see the additional note 11/Feb/2014 below.)

   The next letter is shaped like W, and it says Sh.  This could mean "of", but it is more likely to be the initial letter of the owner's name. The angle and the circle (a boomerang and an eye) are G and `ayin; so the name would be ShG`.

The bottom line seems to be H. S. Sh P `
 "Arrow of Ship`i"
This name Ship`i (English Shiphi) is attested in the Bible, in a list of the descendants of Judah (1 Chronicles 4.37)  

The top line is a palindrome:
 G Sh Z Sh G |.
The vertical bar may be an indicator of the end of the line, but under the circumstances it is unnecessary, since the reader can start at either end and achieve the same result.

The G could be P again but facing in the opposite direction; or all three angles could be G.
Here is a suggestion for interpreting it.

"Servant, return this when it has gone astray".
G says gml with connotations of return (as with the boomerang the sign depicts), give back, or collect (Arabic).
Sh is sh-m-sh, "sun" or "servant" (widely used Semitic root for "serve").
ShG (sh-g-y) means "stray, go astray, err".
Z is "this" or "which".

Of course, scholars trained in the old school of William Foxwell Albright will not allow such logographic use of the letters of the early alphabet, but it was permitted in the pictorial stage of the proto-alphabet, as I have shown in my interpretation of one of the oldest examples we possess, namely the Wadi el-Hol graffito from the western desert of Egypt; and apparently it was still being practised in the text on the Izbet Sartah ostracon,  early in the Iron Age.

I have the feeling that the owner's name was inscribed on the arrow, for this purpose: if it got lost ("strayed") it could be returned to its owner by a servant who ran to collect it.
"Servant, return this when it has gone astray".

And I can add a testimony from Scripture:
"Behold I will send the servant (na`ar): 'Go find the arrows'." (1 Samuel 20:21, Jonathan and David)

But, as I always say, only the person who wrote the inscription knew for certain what it meant.

Note that some scholars who have seen this have told me that they are extremely suspicious of it. But if it is not original, it is still worth inquiring about the forger's intentions; the word for arrow is correct, so the rest of the text might have meaning; it could have been copied from another arrowhead onto this one.

 

So, if we may assume its authenticity. and consider the letters, we can say that the Zayin belongs to the Iron Age, since it was originally ]><] and was eventually reduced to |--|,  though here  it has the more usual upright stance.

The `ayin is an eye, and in the Bronze Age it was a natural depiction (similar to the shape of that arrowhead) normally with the pupil shown; in the Iron Age it became a circle, sometimes with a dot in it, but this disappeared, as in this instance.  However, the circle-sign appears with and without the dot on the the Izbet Sartah ostracon, on the Beth-Shemesh ostracon, and on other contemporary arrowheads, notably a set found in a field at the village el-Khadr, near Bethlehem.

But the dotted circle appears consistently on the Qeiyafa ostracon (dated around 1000 BCE in the lifetime of David).

On that same Qeiyafa inscription (line 2) we can see the two forms of Shin (vertical and horizontal) that appear on this arrowhead; and also a P like the one in second position on that line 2.

11th of February 2014
After close examination of the evidence, I have suggested that for a time the proto-alphabet was used as a syllabary, and each of the 22 letters had three forms, each representing a different vowel (examples: Ba, Bi, Bu).

   By this principle (and with a chart constructed by comparing all the inscriptions from this period) the name can actually be seen as SHI-PI-`I
And, as already stated above, there was a man named Ship`i who was of the tribe of Judah.

On this newly-discovered system of writing, which I call "the neo-syllabary", see:
The Lost Link: The Alphabet in the Hands of the Early Israelites.
http://asorblog.org/?p=6692

The object is catalogued thus:
Holy Land, Eastern Mediterranean, c. 11th century BC. The leaf form arrowhead inscribed on both sides with examples of what is thought to be the earliest known alphabetic writing, a rare script that
bridges Proto-Canaanite and Early Phoenician. See Biblical Archaeology Review Vol. 30 No. 6 for illustration of one example and Vol. 25 No. 3. for an article describing the great importance of this script in the development of the alphabet with two additional illustrations. (Copies of these articles will be provided to the buyer.) These are the earliest known examples of alphabetic writing which was then adopted by the Phoenicians and eventually passed on to the Greeks. Excessively rare, the article cites only 34 known examples. This example is considerably nicer than most of the others.
 It has undergone extensive examination under magnification which confirms traces of ancient patina within the inscribed letters and that the entire surface within the inscription is essentially the same as that of the surface outside them thus confirming the inscriptions are original to the piece.
2.75 inches.
  This artefact is no longer in the hands of the dealer!

MYSTERY TABLET

Ed Shapiro would like us to decipher the marks on this object. The only clue we have is that it is Levantine, that is, from the Syria-Palestine region. Which way up is it? All three photographs have the same position, with the face of the man in the hat in the middle (as he is an optical illusion, you probably can not see him). In the top picture, on the left side there seems to be  a square, which could be a B in the proto-alphabet. It might be cuneiform, though there are more lines than wedges in the apparent characters.  It could be mere doodling, of course.
   As ever, only the person who wrote the inscription knew what it meant (if anything).
   Try turning it so that bottom right becomes bottom left, and the left side becomes the top:
   H (bottom right --> left) --E , standing upright as an exulting and celebrating person (HLL as in Hallelu Yah).
    R (centre) <| (with stem for neck) a human head

MULHOLLAND DRIVE DECODED

Mulholland Dr. (2001) a film of  David Lynch (of Twin Peaks fame) 146 m

I assume you have already seen this movie, otherwise what I have written will be a shocking spoiler for you.

Reading this film is like watching a trailer for the movie, with every item out of sequence, and trying to rearrange everything in correct order.

It is also a matter of deciding which scenes are in unreal dreaming, and which are in actual (though fictional) reality.

The music should assist us. When it is spooky are we in fantasy-land, or dream-time?

What we see is a long dream, interspersed with explanatory scenes from reality, before (and after?) the central character shoots herself. She had taken to her bed in grief and not responded to reality, but finally opens the door to a caller, then sinks into madness, and death.

Here is the gist of the story, as I see it:
A young woman, Diane Selwyn or Betty (Naomi Watts) has come to Los Angeles to be a Hollywood actress. She stays in a house belonging to her Aunt Ruth. A mysterious woman named Camilla Rhodes, alias Rita and Diane (Laura Elena Harring) is involved in a car accident, on Mulholland Drive, Los Angeles; she loses her memory and finds refuge and consolation with Diane/Betty; they become lovers; but Camilla/Rita leaves her for a young film director (Justin Theroux); Diane hires an assassin to kill Camilla.

Rita's purse, containing several wads of cash and a blue key,  corresponds to the handbag that Diane Selwyn (Betty) gives the murderer to kill Camilla Rhodes (Rita); but therewas only one wad of notes in it; and the mysterious blue key (a simple triangular rod to open the box of dark secrets) is equivalent to the blue key (with teeth) that the murderer delivers (somehow) to signify that the deed is done; this key is seen (in real life) on the low table in her home when the real Diane answers the door to the woman who had come to collect her belongings; it is said that they had changed houses; this woman knew that Diane had been out of circulation for three weeks, and that two detectives were looking for her. In the dream it had been Rita-Diane who was hiding from the police. Presumably they wanted to question the real Diane about the death of Camilla.

Towards the end of the movie, at the party on Mulholland Drive (depicting reality, and supplying the key to the whole thing, with the main characters in the dream all present), the film-director announces his engagement to Camilla; he has won Camilla from Diane (she had watched him demonstrate, to an actor,  on the set of the movie, how to kiss her); Diane tells how she met Camilla through the movies; Camilla helped Diane learn her lines (shown in the dream when Rita takes Betty through her audition script); his mother 'Coco' (adorable Ann Miller in her final movie, in a non-dancing role) apparently does not approve of her son's choice, and she puts her hand comfortingly on Diane's: and that is why she appears in the dream as Betty's landlady, looking after her, but not permitting any trouble to disturb the peace.  Diane's drive in a limo to the party also turns up in the dream, where it crashes on M Drive; but it is Camilla in the car, and she escapes from her assassins; she makes her way through a bushy area to find refuge with Diane; in reality she had led Diane from Mulholland Drive to the house where the party was held. Apparently this place belonged to Coco, and her son may have been living with her, after separating from his wife; he makes it clear (he got the pool and she got the pool guy) that he is free to wed again. In an earlier scene, Betty had attended an audition or screen-test, where this director had looked at her with great interest and eye-contact, but he was obliged by heavy pressure from a powerful mobster to choose Camilla Rhodes; but we notice that Betty has to leave before her test, to be with Rita, and the Camilla who gets the role is that other woman seen kissing Camilla at the party, showing us that this is fantasy, expressing Diane's jealousy. Yes, another woman had the name Camilla Rhodes in the dream, and possibly all the stuff about the Mafia causing her to get the part might simply be Diane's rationalizing why she did not get it. At the same time it could be a criticism of gangster interference in movie-making in Hollywood (akin to Woody Allen's Bullets over Broadway, 1994). At the engagement party, that woman, the Camilla of the dream, kisses the real Camilla in front of Diane; this would increase Diane's jealousy and despair.  The cowboy walks past, to show it is real. An earlier detail that is emphasized is the glance shared by Diane and the director at the point where he is allegedly forced to choose Camilla Rhodes for the leading role in his film ("This is the girl").

Winky's Café is a pivotal place in the drama, and the waitress has the name Diane in the dream, but she is Betty in a reality scene, and presumably this is the origin of Diane's name Betty  in the dream. Camilla (as Rita) in her amnesia saw the name Diane on the waitress's name tag and remembered a connection; she had first taken the name Rita from a poster in Aunt Ruth's place, relating to a film starring Rita Hayworth; she recalls the name Diane Selwyn and accepts it as her own.

Diane saw a guy at Winky's, so he gets into her dream; significantly, he is telling someone about his terrifying dreams (the same dream twice).

 The beginning is the end. David Lynch says the clues are there at the start: Diane as winner of a jitterbug contest (confirmed in her narrative at the party); her red bed is shown; we hear breathing, so she is still alive but dreaming. The friendly old couple she met on her way to Hollywood reappear comically but terrifyingly, in her imagination, when she takes up the gun to commit suicide.

The assassin is never in the dream. He has his scene when he murders a man, after they had talked about a car accident  (the one on Mulholland Drive?); he is portrayed as incompetent: besides his victim, from whom he takes the Black Book of telephone numbers, he has to shoot three cleaners (a female,  a male, and a hoover). His meeting in the café with Diane is actual; she shows him a picture of Camilla Rhodes, which is of Rita, not the Camilla in the fantasy.

Aunt Ruth looks in at her home, which she had temporarily lent to Betty, but sees nobody there. This means that Diane had moved to her own place now? Or this indicates that this house was not real? This dwelling at the start is in Diane's fantasy? But it may be that Diane eventually moved from Ruth's place to the house with which she is connected in the dream and in the reality; and then we learn that Diane and another woman changed places in the estate. Viewing the film again (on 6/1/2022) I think that we have two scenes of the aunt having her luggage (trunk) put in the boot (trunk) of a car, and leaving; the second time is in a dream sequence, and takes place in the  housing complex where Diane lives. I say "complex", because this long scene is complicated, and Cryptcracker may not succeed in unraveling it. Diane (Naomi) is being Betty, and Camilla (Laura) thinks she is Diane Selwyn. Betty (Diane) knocks on the door of the dwelling where Diane Selwyn is supposed to live; the woman who opens the door clearly knows Diane, but she does not recognize either Naomi or Laura as Diane; she is aware that Diane has moved to another place in the village, and the couple go there, so this is part of the dream; they break into it; they are struck by a stink, and find a dead body on a bed; it is a woman, with a decomposed or gunshot-damaged face; she is wearing a dress; when Diane dies she is in her dressing gown; David Lynch might know who it is supposed to be; if it is the real Diane, then this would be a premonition of her death. One possibility is the long-haired figure with a terribly ugly face, who lives round the corner, behind Winky's café. 

After this, Camilla cuts her long brown hair short and wears a blonde wig, matching Diane's blonde hair. This must mean something; perhaps Diane in her fantasy is reconstructing Camilla to be one with her again, and the amnesia means that Camilla has forgotten her relationship with the movie-director; it is at this point that they go to bed together (without the wig). However, the blissful spell is broken by Rita waking up in terror (Silencio!) and the search for her identity continues, at a sort of concert.

When Rita/Camilla eventually opens the blue box with the blue key, deep gloom ensues. and Betty has suddenly disappeared.

The cowboy may be in the real world, when the director goes to him; but when he goes to Diane's bedroom and says it is time to wake up, he is in the dream. His place, a corral with the skull of a bull, possibly means he is a harbinger of death. When he appears, just passing through, at the engagement party, he is real.

The trigger that sends Diane into despair is the frolic on the couch (a real reconstruction, not a dream) when she was wearing shorts (but in her dressing gown as she relives it in her mind), and Camilla tells her they should not do this any more. This was presumably a reminiscence made after Diane had been in bed for three weeks, moping about it, and also after the murder, though she was now in her dressing gown. But, subsequently, after the move from lovers to friends, she had reluctantly accepted Camilla's invitation to the engagement party on MDr.

Then there is the visit of Betty and Rita to Diane's home (not the one in the phonebook, because of a swap) and the decomposing body is found; the face is not recognizable but it seems to be Diane.

On the way, Camilla is afraid when she sights two men in a car. Diane is told that two detectives are looking for her. This might be the reason why Betty and Rita are searching. However, the detectives may be investigating the death of Camilla, in real life, and Diane is the one they are seeking, and Camilla is "Diane" at this juncture (a possible case of blame-shifting).

When they flee from the house the heads are put out of focus or phase (merged?). To confuse us along the way Camilla changes her name from Rita to Diane, after sighting this name on the name tag of the waitress; similarly, the real Diane Selwyn is given the name Betty in the dream. Incidentally, in scenes where Camilla calls Diane by her real name, we can assume that we are looking at real life.

All the Betty and Rita scenes are in dreamland, but their sexual relationship took place in reality. Rita already has a pet name for Betty when they first get into bed together; Camilla had spoken that way to Diane . Betty asks: Have you ever done this before? Possibly they did live together in one place for some time.

Was Camilla still alive in the aftermath? Rita escaped from the attempted murder on Mulholland Dr. The hit-man hired by Diane is shown to be a bungler, as we have seen. However, the tell-tale blue key is in place on the low table at a late point in the sequence, and Diane is unnerved by it; her fantasizing is caused by it. Rita's escape from death may be wishful dreaming on Diane's part, amplified in the scenes of the relations between the couple; in the dream, Camilla has forgotten her past and is able to make a new start with Diane. The cowboy appears to tell Diane to wake up to reality; she gets out of bed, makes a cup of coffee, has a brief encounter with the real world in the person of the woman who has changed houses with Diane, already known to us in the dream, who has come to collect her belongings, packed in a box (these details might become the blue box in the dream?). Diane has a fleeting vision of Camilla ("You've come back"), and then she hastens to her death.  

Perhaps the dream and fantasies of Diane are her subconscious (by the way, Justin Theroux has commented: "David works from his subconscious") expressing the desire to undo what has been done. But the murderer had asked her whether she was sure she wanted it to happen, and she was adamant.

Finally, Diane/Betty and Camilla/Diane are both together, with happy faces, but in ghost form; we may assume that both of them are now united in death.

What is the point of "Silencio", chanted by Rita in bed with Betty, before they go to the puzzling scene in a concert hall, where the performers mime to a recording. "Silencio" is repeated in a whisper  at the very end? "The rest is silence"? I admit I am still struggling to unravel the notion "prerecorded" in all this dreaming. Does it apply to the whole dream in some way, or merely to a particular aspect of it?

My decipherment remains as enigmatic and disordered as the original; this is a comparison of the motifs in the two realms, rather than a frame-by-frame analysis;  but I think that it is the method to be applied: distinguish the dream (Diane's life flashing before her in a distorted fantasy) from the reality (the fictional story!). 

In January of 2021, I watched a documentary about the singer Donovan and his sojourn (together with the Beatles) at the ashram of the Maharishi, to learn Transcendental Meditation. David Lynch appears and says that he saw the scenes of MDr in his mind in the sequence they should follow. OK! Or should we say (as in the Australian comedy, The Castle): Tell 'im 'e's dreamin'.

INSCRIBED STAMP SEAL

 

What's this?
Well, I tried a possibility that it was ancient Egyptian cursive (Hieratic), but it really looks like an alphabetic script from the current era, such as Syriac or Arabic. It is indeed the Kufic style of the Arabic alphabet. And what does it say? Refer to this table.
4th of May 2013